The Acquisition of Weightlessness
by misprint
Summary: Nixon waits out the end of the war. Slash.


It's a story about sexual, romantic, dirty dirty gay love. You should read it.

**The Acquisition of Weightlessness**

The more Nixon fights (or doesn't fight) the more rounds he shoots (or doesn't shoot) he is beginning to see this war as more of a paradoxical series of gatherings, a (looks up at Winters) succession of coming-togethers. Easy to win. Easy to lose.

And maybe that's why he does not shoot – the odds of death and life are steep ones, Nixon would rather gamble with the intangibility of cash because no matter how much he lost there was always more coming, he plays poker with the lackadaisical rashness of the rich and smiles even when he loses. But out in the field, dug into cold hard earth (and it's cold here) the odds are different (who, on the other side of his trench, would be the one with a bullet slipping under the lip of his helmet today?)

So Nixon doesn't shoot.

Who was it, he asks (he's in that mood) that first pitted bullet to flesh and thought it good? Who was it that stood at the feet of an explosion, feeling for only seconds it's weight, it's width, and smiled?

I don't know, Nix -- and that's Winters saying that, angled away from him.

I can't answer that.

Yeah. Right -- Nix says slowly, kisses the lips of his bottle once more, wonders why he even bothers asking. Dick deals in solids, now, physical, tangible things (jump knives and tin cups) because it's that much easier. Nixon, with no bodies to his name, can afford to be more philosophical.

Do you want something? Winters asks him this, more than once, twice. Just tell me. I don't have time to play games right now. – But he usually says this from the other side of his typewriter, over the clacking sound of the keys that remind Nixon (so much) of rifles being cocked, in unison, down the line.

No. No, Nixon doesn't want anything. He is the other side of contentedness. He does not even want to go home. What, after all, is home compared to the bottom of a fox hole? So many niceties, luxuries, all of this when Nixon was having the time of his life, surrounded by snow, swapping Italian curse words for German ones with Liebgott and singing the only songs they could remember?

_Anmachen, _he says to himself, even today. _Die Fotze. Rammeln. Zim zam goddamn. We're Airbourne infantry._

No – Nixon says this, will probably leave after that. Dick doesn't like it when he sits around and just watches.

Sometimes he finds Webster, seeks the boy out and baits him in arguments (if Donne and Milton got in a fight, Donne would win. Prove me wrong, Harvard) but more often than not they cannot stand one another and settle with themselves, lonely, full of fighting words and the feeling of cold footprints in knee deep snow.

Do you want something? Hard to say. Nixon wants to be able to shoot without reservation, to read a book with a glass of wine and all the time in the world, to take Berlin, to sleep hard and deep and wake up with sun across his body only. To fist up tight these darker, deeper needs (much easier to be needless) and live, just for a day, with his face turned sunwards and be weightless.

The days here are long and hot, each and every one of them slips underneath the lip of Nixon's bottle, they are all a blur of flashing sunlight under closed eyelids. He waits out the days and lives in the few small hours of the evening (the bottles are empty) for Dick Winters to find him (the lakeshore, the forest) and walk him back to base. Help him into his bed. Deal with other, darker matters because Dick is sad and Nixon is drunk and in one hundred years they will both be dead and it won't matter anymore, because they can, because they can.

Do you want something? Yes, Nixon wants to say. You know what I want. Sometimes I'm afraid everyone knows what I want.

He tells Dick about New Jersey and watches the thoughts shifting beneath his skin, admires sunlight and pale flesh and light dustings of freckles that stand out more in the sun (the only thing Dick every complains about). Sometimes it is strange to see Dick in sunlight, Nixon has grown accustomed to seeing his mouth, his eyes, his hands all slight in dark corners only.

I'll think about it – Nixon takes this uneasily, settles with it, waits. _Redheads_, he thinks to himself, watching as Dick moves up the dock, steady with a confidence that exists only in the sunlight.

That night, when Dick finds him to walk him home, the gestures and contact lose meaning, become a long string of gatherings and meetings, of touchings and partings. He doesn't want to hope (better to be needless, better to be…) but in his heart he carves out a place where every day is home and the mornings creep up on him, slowly and warmly, and the first thing he feels is a lithe, hard body curled (question mark) next to his, sleeping, sleeping…


End file.
